Chapter 126: Montage

Viv’s mortality notwithstanding, there were a few tasks that required her attention. The first was the raid in the Deadlands to liberate their first major city after Kazar. The second was the impending war with Param’s boogeymen: the Hallurians. She suspected the second part might take much longer as it had been a long time since the last conflict and the various countries had a lot of spare poor people to feed their war machines.

 

Viv wasn’t sure this was the best use of their people. Or rather, she thought it was a shit idea despite some historical evidence to the contrary. The monsters on this stupid planet had a tendency to stay in their territory until challenged, which explorers tended to do. Then some of the more canny ones realized there were entire places filled with sweet-tasting humans ripe for the taking and ventured out, eager to feast. This led to the destruction of villages and, sometimes, cities. There was a real incentive to claim savage territory very slowly while also taking land someone else had cleared much faster.

 

It annoyed Viv but there was little she could do to change an entire civilization.

 

In any case, her recent progress with magic and more free time gave her the opportunity to develop her arsenal. She had validated all the basic lessons including the ethics one, leaving her with black and colorless mana studies, the military class and dueling. The time had come to make use of the Academy’s resources.

 

The first and most important priority was her mainstay, the purge and flay spells. Those sent tendrils of black mana charged with the meaning of annihilation to sweep the air in front of her. While it was very good at what it did, the range remained fairly limited and it required to stay focused on it. Her ability to cast several spells at once meant that it was not handicapping but she thought she could do better with a ‘fire and forget’ long-range tool.

 

The idea came from the latest effort of the black-mana tenured professor, Ashra, to make her class more relevant for the conflict to come. Artillery spells were layered constructs designed to stay cohesive during the arc so they could properly explode at the end. However, shields almost always covered the juiciest targets. There were plenty of historical examples of black-mana minor practitioners lacing the color to the payload to increase penetration. That was the angle Ashra picked, and though the most advanced students made some promising efforts, it was clear they were not at the level to achieve it at the moment.

 

Viv had another idea.

 

Since black mana was her payload, she could replace the shield piercing portion by a compression construct, the same she used to create fire through friction. It would undo itself on impact to explosively release destructive mana in a much larger sphere. It took a lot of trial and error but eventually she succeeded with the help of both Ashra and the colorless mana professor. The results were… convincing.

 

“Astra.”

 

Viv focused on the practice room target. With a slow hum, a sphere of arcane mana gathered around a core of annihilation and compressed it. That was the most delicate part of the process and Viv had practiced hard to keep the spell coherent. Just using two types of mana in conjunction with a dozen glyphs and a concept required a level of concentration and innate understanding she could not have dreamed of a year ago when her best spell was yoink. Both stats and her own understanding played a role in her success.

 

Alright so it was still her best spell against undead and it was still called yoink but that one was much better. Viv added the finishing touch, a much simplified artillery construct that was barely more than a direction and velocity, then she let it go.

 

The transparent sphere sung on its way to the target, gaining speed as it hastened to deliver its abyssal core. Most of Viv’s spells were silent. That one was not. A loud thump rang through the air, soon followed by the telltale hiss of black mana at work. There was nothing left of the target dummy except for a half-severed head resting on a small depression in the parquet where the spell had turned the wood floor to atoms. Or at least, she hoped it had turned it to atoms.

 

“Is… is your spell transporting the target somewhere?” Ashra asked.

 

“I don’t think so.”

 

“Oh.”

 

Ashra still hadn’t managed to learn the annihilation concept. Viv thought that was because the professor didn’t actively intend to harm anyone. That had never been an issue for Viv. There were plenty of people she wanted gone.

 

The second tool she developed was a harness.

 

Gravity-repelling runes were insanely complex to create and activate, but fortunately Viv had jumped from a plane and dived before so she was familiar with the illusion of weightlessness. It made her task marginally easier, though she could never have done it without Sidjin.

 

Viv had been tempted by the enchanting class. Sadly for her, the teacher only accepted those who intended to make enchantment their vocation in the higher levels of the curriculum, something Viv was unwilling to do. Enchanting was merely a means to an end to her. On the contrary, Sidjin’s relentless pursuit of the subject made him an invaluable helper. He was more than happy to assist Viv on her projects now that he had so much free time between establishing teleporters and collecting fat purses. The anti-gravity harness still took a long time to design because it was completely experimental.

 

Flight was not new to Nyil. Helock didn’t just have griffin riders. They also had flights of gray mana experts, some of whom could be seen darting between the lowest of the floating rocks hanging over the Academy’s sky. It was just that those who wanted to fly either asked those people for a lift or gave up. No one seemed to want to fly for fun. Or perhaps, no one with the means to actually do it wanted to fly for fun. Mostly, Viv wanted to fly for Arthur.

 

Mother.

 

Flap arms faster!

 

The harness dug into Viv’s waist, armpits, and crotch. She felt dragged up by a crane more than truly weightless until the magic kicked in. Even then it felt like being stranded in a vacuum rather than flying.

 

“That’s not how it works. Ugh! Propulsion!”

 

Since Viv had no way of using gray mana, her solution had been to use Sidjin’s grinding spell as base to create her own rudimentary propeller. Instead of blades, she used a higher amount of large panes that moved as fast as she could manage to create an air flow. It gave her about as much speed as a slow mobility scooter.

 

Viv sighed. Sidjin had used the harness and achieved high speed with a gray mana. It was just not her thing.

 

“Maybe I need to create a turbojet. There’s just no way I can cast a spell this complex though, not any time soon.”

 

Arthur sighed, or huffed. It sounded suspiciously like a forge bellow. A breath of hot hair blew Viv’s hair forward. Suddenly, claws grabbed her shoulders and thighs and she was off over the canopy of the hidden spot they had selected.

 

“Woohoo!”

 

It has taken I, She-Who-Feasts-on-Many-and-Gets-Much-Gold, many weeks to fly well.

 

I must be patient with mother.

 

Now I show proper flying!

 

And she did, and the first thing Viv decided when she was back on the ground with shaky legs was that she should get flight goggles so they could go even faster the next time. Flying was absolutely awesome. It was just unfortunate that she had to be held like some sort of fuel tank just under Arthur’s belly.

 

***

 

With the harness done, Viv’s last piece of art and craft was not for herself. It was also one of the most ambitious and complex enchanting works Sidjin had ever faced. The nerdy prince loved every second of it as he spent hours upon hours pondering single lines for maximum efficiency.

 

The rewards for the necrarch hunt included not just tools to help her transition into a form that would let her live. It had also yielded three cores of excellent size from the nascents they had defeated. Enough to power large-scale constructs for hours. Now, Viv would dedicate those cores to turning the Harrakan into the viable tercios she envisioned them to be.

 

The issue with Harrakan troops right now was that they were too good yet too few, the perfect target for large-scale artillery spells. They needed protection from bombardment to do what they were meant to do. Viv had a solution. The idea was simple: powerful, mobile shield arrays carried on the back of Yries machines.

 

The execution would be slightly more complex.

 

While there would be no friction between the machine’s systems and the shield itself, it was extremely challenging to pack a spell circle in a surface small enough to be portable. In order to solve that issue, Viv had come up with a solution inspired from the shield she’d spotted in the necrarch cave during her first visit.

 

The ancient inhabitants of the lone mountain placed pieces of metal into the wall in the shape of glyphs, glyphs themselves being three-dimensional. Apparently. Sometimes, they felt more complex yet drawing them as such always seemed to work so whatever. In any case, Viv’s solution was a deployable circle of levitating metal components emerging from a large cylinder. The cylinder would be made of steel by the Yries but the floating symbols needed to be made with a silverite alloy. That exhausted the rest of her reserves and some ore she had to purchase from the university at great cost, but in the end, they had a working prototype of the glyphs and a blueprint.

 

“Why do you keep calling it a blueprint? It is clearly yellow in color?” Sidjin asked.

 

“I think it was based on a process in my world to create engineering drawings on a light-sensitive sheet. Why, what do you usually call it?”

 

“A drawing?”

 

“Could you make it blue?”

 

“… fine.”

 

They had a blueprint, which she would deliver to the Yries during her next visit.

 

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***

 

Viv walked in the armorer’s shop in her best clothes, the doormen letting her in on sight. Sometimes, it paid to be discreet but sometimes one had to let themselves be known. This was such a moment, and the robe waiting on a mannequin in the middle of the clean room would serve the same purpose.

 

The piece of armor looked almost incongruous among the fancy dresses and panes of polished wood. Black and white with notes of silver, it was a queenly piece of garment, exquisitely made with a strong eastern influence in the upper part and a split skirt that reached the knee. Mail peered out from under the void-color spider silk. Finely embroidered glyphs covered the entire surface. There were pockets and it was designed to accommodate a backpack, as well as a potion harness the armorer couple in charge of the project had also done. There were clasps, small cores, and silverite workings all over the place. It looked like what it was, both a mighty piece of gear and the symbol of someone with means and ambition. It would serve as her field uniform.

 

Viv put it on before the final adjustments but the tailors had done a prime job. The colorless self-cleaning and repair enchantments meant that the incredible piece of equipment would not just remain fresh throughout a campaign, it would also contribute to making her better. That was a technology she wished she had back in Afghanistan.

 

She couldn’t wait to test it on the field.

 

As soon as that thought hit her synapses, Viv cursed herself for inviting catastrophe.

 

***

 

Helock had an arena.

 

Viv was not a fan of blood sports as a matter of principle. The rest of the continent had no such qualms, to the extent it was probably only a matter of time before Harrak requested its own coliseum. Helock’s arena was not the largest. That honor belonged to the Hallurian capital’s blood ground. It was still a large structure at the edge of the noble district that Viv had never been to before.

 

Just entering the place was an experience. There was a queue coming from the lower districts for poor people and another for rich residents, which Viv used with Rakan. It led to a circular ground surrounded by rafters split in two tiers, or three if one counted the VIP lodge at the top. A fence separated the lower from the higher section which meant that, although this was entertainment for everyone, they were not meant to mix. Salespeople carrying dizzying amounts of food hawked their wares to the few spectators already present in the mid-afternoon. Viv bought herself and Rakan a few grilled nuts and some toasted bread dipped in spice and oil. They even had some cooled, lemony water made fresh with blue mana, all of it for a reasonable price. They munched on the goods while watching the early shows.